


black honey

by butbythegrace



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: 18 at end, Angst, Asphyxiation, Dark Roy, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Death Threats, Ed POV, Ed is 12 at beginning, Gaslighting, Grooming of a Minor, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Blame, Sexual Abuse, Suicidal Thoughts, Underage Drinking, abuse recovery, literally one sentence of Ed/Ling, underweight character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 10:48:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28527231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/butbythegrace/pseuds/butbythegrace
Summary: For as suddenly as everything shatters, it feels like a slow burn. A candle that ends up being dynamite that turns out to be a minefield, a smattering of random explosions that raze every part of Ed they touch.
Relationships: Edward Elric/Roy Mustang
Comments: 13
Kudos: 170





	black honey

**Author's Note:**

> This is the most difficult piece I’ve ever had to write. I hope it reaches someone who needs to hear it.
> 
> It’s a mix of 03 and Brotherhood and I went a lil buckwild with the timeline. It’s all done purposefully, please don’t come at me.
> 
>  **PLEASE be warned** there is also a mention of past Roy/Riza noncon. Post-traumatic stress disorder will manifest as flashbacks, nightmares, dissociation, anxiety, depression. There will be moments of homicidal thoughts/urges.
> 
> If I can do a better job with tags or warnings, please let me know.
> 
> The first bit of part III is graphic noncon, with several other instances mentioned in the rest of that section. Skip to “Mustang briefly” to avoid the graphic noncon, or to part IV to avoid all of it. If you choose to skip any of it, it may be useful to know that Mustang threatens Ed with his and Al's lives, and Ed starts a coded journal detailing the incidents. 
> 
> Shoutout to the beta who offered to go over this one. You were a great source of motivation for me to finish it and give it the extra love it needed. Thank you for all that you do, I appreciate you endlessly.

I tried to stick this pin through a butterfly  
'cause I, I like all the pretty colors  
but it just fell apart, so I flung it in the fire  
to burn with all the others. 

'Black Honey' by Thrice

I

Teacher makes him and Al attend the martial arts classes she teaches to a small group of neighborhood kids every weekend, which Ed thinks is stupid. It’s nothing more than the absolute basics of the basics. What the hell are he and Al ever going to learn from this? She’s already turned them into acrobatic little gremlins who frequently test the laws of physics, yet still expects them to show up for amateur hour. It’s annoying. 

Teacher doesn’t care for his opinion and pushes them through the mind-numbing training all the same. She explains how different a close-quartered confrontation can be while cleaning out a corner of the shed in her backyard, then makes them try to fight her there. Ed, who’s never fought in anything smaller than her garden and whose practiced strikes are far too exaggerated for such a tight space, hates how bad he is at it. 

He’s even worse at ground fighting. He thinks the entire concept of ground fighting is dumb though, because if you’ve been put to the ground in a fight, then you’ve basically already lost.

He knows better than to say that to Teacher’s face, but the defiance must still be written all over him. She drags him and Al through several agonizing months of her ridiculous shed classes, then finally starts letting them sleep in on the weekends. Every now and then when they’re sparring she still puts him to the ground, just to keep him on his toes.

It’s much later when Ed realizes how hard she tried. Of them all, she tried the hardest.

  
  


II

For as suddenly as everything shatters, it feels like a slow burn. A candle that ends up being dynamite that turns out to be a minefield, a smattering of random explosions that raze every part of Ed they touch.

He thinks Mustang may have started planning it as soon as his eyes landed on a defenseless double amputee, a child so out of his mind on narcotics he thought the figure in blue had to be a hallucination, a dream.

He turns out to be a nightmare.

  
  


Ed should be angry, and he tries to act like he is, but the first time he lays eyes on Roy Mustang while not under the influence of a questionable amount of painkillers, he’s a little more starstruck instead.

 _The_ Flame Alchemist. Hero of the Ishval Civil War. One of the youngest colonels in history. 

It’s more than just his notoriety though, his alchemy is cool as hell and Ed is kind of dying to get a good look at the circles stitched into those gloves.

Ed should be _so pissed_ that this man manipulated him, lied to him, and risked both his and Al’s lives on that train. 

But he’d risen to the challenge. He'd subdued the giant man who called himself Bald, doing what multiple adults couldn’t manage. He’s proven himself, and Mustang is impressed. Woven amongst his egotistical diatribe is praise the likes of Ed has never received before, and from the _Flame Alchemist_. 

Ed will never admit it to anyone, but it’s thrilling. 

He wants more.

  
  


The way Mustang and Ed speak to one another makes Al uncomfortable. He thinks Ed gets so worked up over the colonel because he has some sort of a crush on him, which is bad enough as it is, but Al also thinks that Mustang is far too _accommodating_ \- Ed can literally hear the italics - of Ed’s bad behavior.

Al says it sounds like they’re flirting. Ed gags and tells him it’s purely antagonistic. It’s rare for him to find someone who will speak to him like an adult, an equal, so excuse him for enjoying it a little.

 _Flirting_. Gross.

  
  


Mustang is one of the first to show up to Ed’s hospital room after the incident with Barry the Chopper. Ed would rather just forget about the whole awful thing, but he can’t deny having someone this concerned about him is nice. It’s certainly a welcomed contrast from Winry’s sharp anger or Pinako’s quiet disapproval.

He answers the colonel’s probing questions as best as he can, even when Mustang asks if Barry touched him. Ed details what little of the fight he can remember, and shows Mustang his shoulder, easily the worst of his injuries. The skin is wrapped in crisp white bandages from where the butcher took a slice out of him uncomfortably close to his neck.

Mustang’s eyes linger there. He licks his lips and asks Ed if that was all that happened. He insists that Ed can tell him anything; he would believe whatever he has to say.

Confused at just what the man is trying to pull from him - and still feeling a little small about the whole ordeal in general - Ed awkwardly confesses how terrified he’d been. How sure he was that he was going to die, and how lonely that moment was. That he thought he’d have to take a man’s life to even have a chance at saving his own.

By the end of his increasingly distressed rambling, his face is hot and his eyes sting. This moment of weakness is embarrassing enough, but to have it happen in front of the colonel makes it approximately five hundred percent worse.

Mustang knows just how to comfort him. He doesn’t make a big deal about it, and his touch is careful, a gentle hand on Ed’s shoulder. He seems satisfied with Ed’s answer. They quietly sit together until Ed’s breathing slows down.

When Ed looks back on this encounter years later with new understanding, it’s with disgust. 

  
  


Al doesn’t like all the hanging around Ed’s been doing in the colonel’s office on his down time, but there’s little to explain. He’s just bored, and Mustang is more entertaining than most. He also doesn’t seem to mind Ed’s company.

Al says if he’s looking for a father figure, then Mr. Hughes would do just as well. Better even, because, y’know, him being a dad and all.

Ed scoffs at the notion that he’s looking for a father figure in Roy fucking Mustang. He isn't some orphan in search of a parent. In fact, it’s the exact opposite. Ed is starving for _just one_ person who doesn’t treat him like a kid or look at him with pity.

Mustang never does. He’d knowingly planted Ed, eleven years old and fresh out of automail rehab, on a train hijacked by domestic terrorists. He’d yanked Ed from his blood soaked knees and screamed in his face at the spot where Nina died. He confides in Ed about his own dabbles in human transmutation. He lets Ed not only look at, not just touch, but _try on_ his gloves. Ed’s hands swim in them. 

Mustang takes interest in Ed too, takes the time to get to know him and how his brain works. He compliments Ed’s intelligence, his achievements. He says he sometimes forgets how young Ed is.

Al tells Ed to avoid being alone with him. Ed thinks he might be jealous.

  
  


Mustang is the only one to let Ed know he has a right to attend formal military events just like any other state alchemist. It makes him feel rather grown up to be the youngest person invited to evenings filled with important adults. Not that he wants to go or anything, because it actually sounds like the literal worst, easily just as dumb and boring as Teacher’s shed classes. It’s just nice to know that he could, if he wanted.

It isn’t until an annual series of parties hosted at the Armstrong manor are announced that he receives unsolicited push back. Hawkeye and Al heavily disapprove of him attending any of them - too much booze and politics, nothing more than an excuse to get drunk off top-shelf shit and schmooze with other officers. Ed isn’t remotely interested in either of these things, but because they’re both so fucking annoyingly preachy about it, he decides to go at least once. Better yet if he can convince Mustang to swipe him something from the bar.

Hughes tells the wet blankets to lighten up. Ed will be surrounded by plenty of adults he knows, and Mustang won't let Ed out of his sight, right?

Mustang promises, and to his credit, he keeps it.

  
  


It’s an usually hot day for spring when Hawkeye asks for Ed’s help carrying several boxes of files down to the basement. It’s fucking sweltering in Mustang’s third floor office, so Ed jumps at the chance to cool off. Once they get down there though, her true motive rings clear. As soon as they place the boxes on their shelves, she not-so-subtly asks about the nature of his and the colonel’s relationship.

Ed is as taken aback as he is confused. He wonders where this came from. Why is everyone being so goddamn weird about him and Mustang? Ed just thinks there's a lot to learn from him, that’s all.

He tells her the truth - they just talk, a lot about alchemy and not much else. It's not so different from a mentor-student sort of thing. 

Ed can tell by the suspicious narrowing of her eyes that she doesn’t believe him. When he asks what she’s expecting him to say, she becomes visibly uncomfortable. She says people may get the wrong impression, and tells him to be careful, two warnings that don’t make much sense to him.

What sort of impression? Be careful of what? 

She doesn't elaborate, and Ed doesn't ask. He shrugs her off and goes to find a quiet spot to lay down and soak up the cold from the basement's bare stone floor.

Up until they have that discussion, she’d always been interrupting him and Mustang, seeking them out at formal events when they’d wandered from the crowd, or when they’d been alone in the office for apparently what she decided was too long, but now she keeps her distance. Ed wonders if she’s jealous, too.

  
  


III

Mustang probably planned to give it more time and ease Ed in a little more gradually, maybe even almost gently, taking his time and drawing it out. But after the Tuckers and Barry the Chopper comes Scar, three traumatic moments in quick succession, each leaving death nipping at Ed's heels, and Ed thinks Mustang gets too nervous about possibly missing his chance to wait any longer. 

He waits just long enough. Not one moment more. And when it finally happens, it’s startlingly fast. It’s kind of like the universe tries to do a magic trick, the one where the tablecloth gets ripped out from underneath the dinner set, only something goes terribly wrong and all the delicate things shatter when they fall, covering the floor in sharp pieces that cut anyone who even tries to touch them.

  
  


They’re off on their own in a room at the Armstrong mansion, at one of the very parties Hawkeye and Al were worried over. They’ve done this more than a few times by now and it’s become a soothing habit, a necessary break from all the noise and uptight officers and exhausting expectations. 

The conversation has come to a lull, but neither of them ever mind silence. Mustang hasn’t moved from the chair where he sits working away at his drink. It’s the same one he’d let Ed have a sip of earlier, and even though it was absolutely disgusting and made his face feel hot, he’d still gone in for two more. He had to shed his coat and sprawl out in a chair for a few minutes while his body righted itself, then he got back up and started poking around the room, looking at frames on the walls, walking his fingers across the spines of books on the shelves. It’s comfortable, familiar. It’s safe. 

And then, quite suddenly, it’s all over.

Ed’s about to snag an undoubtedly precious physics book from 1820 off the shelf when he feels Mustang’s presence at his back, so he turns his head and looks up at him. 

The effects of Mustang’s manipulation present just as a predator dreams they would. What tells Ed something is wrong isn’t Mustang’s invasion of his personal space, or that he’s placed himself in one of Ed’s most vulnerable blind spots. Those two things should have immediately set off alarm bells - and would have with most everyone else - but those senses had been numbed to Mustang some time ago.

Ed wonders what Mustang had seen right then, looking down on him. Pretty blonde hair? long eyelashes? wide eyes too full of misplaced trust? something pure he wanted to drag down and make just as dirty as himself? did he enjoy watching Ed’s innocent confusion shift into fear-soaked understanding?

It’s Mustang’s expression - cold and focused, analyzing Ed from his head to his toes - that makes something sharp and scary crackle down Ed’s nerves, causing his fingers and toes to tingle. In that moment the wool is lifted from his eyes, and he stands there, blinded and blinking, quite unsure of what he sees. By the time it registers that Mustang has abandoned his drink and donned one of his gloves, it’s too late.

It’s _so_ fast.

There’s no hesitation, only a calculated, precise series of events that take mere seconds to execute. A bare hand too-tight in Ed’s hair, stinging as it maneuvers his entire body, dragging him in and down. A closet with stiff carpet pressing into his back. Mustang’s body on top of his, his arms pinning Ed’s wrists above his head, his breathing ragged against Ed’s neck. A belt digs into the soft skin of Ed’s belly, and something else presses against his hip. A single strip of light cuts through the otherwise dark space, running jaggedly over Mustang’s back.

“What are you doing?” Ed hears himself ask, but Mustang ignores him. He keeps his weight on Ed’s body as he releases Ed’s flesh wrist to fumble hastily with his belt buckle, clumsy at first as he maps out the unfamiliar design, then quick and efficient as he pulls it loose and gets Ed’s pants open. 

It’s like being in a nightmare. Ed’s been _trained_ to fight. He should be scratching, screaming, fucking up Mustang’s _sick fucking face_ as much as he can, but it’s like his brain has frozen. His ears ring and his muscles feel like lead, like he’s forcing his movements through frigid water clogged with ice flows. He tries to fend off Mustang’s hands, but going for the hands is a rookie error, a mistake someone who’s never been in this situation for real makes, and Ed's one is no match against two that are far bigger and stronger than his. Several tugs later and Mustang’s got Ed’s pants and underwear down to his knees. He uses one of his feet to push them the rest of the way down, and then his knee to keep them there, trapping Ed’s feet.

Mustang grabs Ed’s flesh hand and uses his own automail arm to pin it to the floor. Ed struggles against the man’s grip, the metal and bone of his forearms grinding together painfully, but the only thing it earns him is the sound of the ignition cloth scratching against steel. There’s nothing he can do. He can only watch as Mustang works his tie free, drapes it across Ed’s mouth, and maneuvers his mismatched hands to bracket his face. 

Ed squeezes his eyes shut against a sudden blinding light. He realizes there’s a circle stitched into that tie as its transmutation crackles across his skin. Ed’s lips and wrist tingle and the metal of his arm buzzes as the tie wraps tightly around his mouth, binding his wrists on either side of his face.

The fucking _bastard_. He’d _planned_ this. He’d brought Ed here tonight knowing this would happen. He’d watched Ed meander around the party still taking place one story beneath them, knowing this would happen. He’d given him alcohol, brought him upstairs to this room, watched him smile as his fingers ghosted against knick knacks and books, _knowing_.

When the light fades and the man’s grip on him eases, Ed’s fight starts anew. He twists and bucks under Mustang, trying in vain to yank his feet free from his pants, but his boots make it impossible. He tries to cut at Mustang with what little range his elbows offer, but Mustang just laughs at him. It ignites the flash-bang of Ed’s rage. He lurches his entire upper body up with a muffled snarl and manages to smack Mustang across the face with a metal elbow. He knows by feel alone that he hardly made contact, but Mustang stops laughing. He puts a hand to the front of Ed’s shoulder and slams him back into the carpet, then wraps his other hand around Ed’s neck and digs in.

It doesn’t take long for Ed’s vision to start fading at the edges, his body quickly running out of enough oxygen to fuel its adrenalized state, and his struggle is brought to a simple end. Mustang’s hand only eases up when Ed thinks he’s about to lose himself, but it still stays firmly around his neck in threat. Dizzy and out of breath, Ed does the only thing he can do at that point and does his best to see what Mustang is doing, straining his eyes to see through the dim light and odd angle. He hears Mustang unzip his own pants and shuffle around a bit, then he brings a square packet to his mouth, ripping it open with his teeth.

At this point Ed has a clear enough idea of what’s going to happen. He’d grown up surrounded by farmland and its animals. Teacher and Sig had given him the talk when he was ten. He’d read every single anatomy and biology book he could get both his flesh hands on. He knows what sex is, in the procreative sense, but he’s never considered that people actually do _this_ , that men do this to other men. 

That adults do this to kids.

Mustang snaps and uses the flame like a pair of scissors, the warm glow completely severing Ed’s pants into two halves, allowing him the freedom to push Ed’s flesh knee to his shoulder and pin it there.

Ed is hit with the memory of what it was like to be ripped away from the jaws of a serial killer by the skin of his teeth and scrabbles at the last threads of hope that someone will save him. They slip through his fingers as soon as he feels Mustang press against him.

It hits him, very suddenly, how terribly young he is to be here. 

When Mustang starts to force himself up Ed’s ass, Ed screams. It doesn’t matter that Mustang catches what little escapes the gag in a gloved hand and presses it right back against Ed’s mouth, that he shushes Ed as if he were no more than a crying child. It doesn’t matter that the only person aware of Ed’s pain is the one getting off on it; Ed screams because it’s the only thing he has left, the only thing that can describe this horror with absolute clarity.

His vision floods. His body instinctively rails against Mustang’s intrusion with all its might, locking down every muscle. He can feel the boot on his automail foot digging up the carpet as he searches for enough purchase to try to push himself away and alleviate the burning pressure that feels like it’s going to kill him. The only thing his struggle succeeds in doing is prolonging the inevitable, in making the fight all the sweeter for Mustang. The resistance makes the man pause in his shushing to groan and curse and take several deep breaths to steady himself, then he presses that much harder, fighting Ed for every agonizing bit of progress. 

What feels like ages after he’d started, Mustang’s hips finally press flush against Ed’s ass. They’re both shaking, chests heaving, and Ed continues to sob into Mustang’s hand, the grit of the glove stinging his face where the tie doesn’t already cover. Tears stream from the corners of his eyes, sliding back to dampen his hairline. He puts up what little fight he still can with his hands bound and one leg pinned, digging his heel into the torn carpet in an effort to push Mustang off. He presses their hips together. He arcs his back and pushes his ass into the floor. He struggles to get his knee between their bellies. It’s futile. Mustang’s far too big and strong for Ed to escape this, to do anything other than unwittingly fuck himself on the man’s body by trying, and it _hurts_. It hurts it hurts it hurts to fight, but almost just as badly to lay there doing nothing, so he gives in to his terror, his thrashing turning all the more furious the more he panics.

Mustang, not only unfazed by Ed’s frantic movements but seeming to find pleasure in them, groans. He reaches down to grab Ed’s ass in an effort to hold him close and still. “If you don’t stop doing that, I’m going to come,” he warns, breathless, and Ed freezes, horrified at the thought of that happening.

Satisfied that Ed has stopped struggling for the time being, Mustang finally eases his weight off of him, cock pulling at Ed’s ass as he sits back on his calves. He brings Ed’s other leg up, hands crawling up the soft underside of Ed’s thighs, pushing his trembling legs up and apart. Ed won’t look him in the eye, but he knows Mustang is looking down on him as if in admiration, eyes roaming over the mess he’s made.

“You’re so pretty like this,” Mustang says, confirming as much, and disgust and shame pit themselves in Ed’s belly. The first rolls of Mustang’s hips make Ed squeeze his eyes shut and whine, and it’s the first true thrust that pushes a sob out of him. Mustang leans back down, covering Ed’s body with his own, and falls into a steady pace soon after. 

Ed does his best to be anywhere but fully present in his body. He latches on to the periodic table and frantically feeds himself the most basic data of the elements - of their chaotic atoms and the fragile chemical bonds that somehow hold them and everything else in this world together, and maybe if he focuses hard enough on it all he can rearrange his subatomic particles into something, anything that will let him escape this - a liquid to stain the scratchy carpet and torn clothes, a poisonous gas that lingers just long enough before dissipating into the air - but every time Mustang pushes inside him, it punches the air out of Ed’s lungs and brings him right back. 

Mustang thoroughly enjoys this. He buries a hand in Ed’s hair and says something nasty about his voice, then starts to vary his rhythm as he tests the different sounds he can get Ed to make just as a cat would torture a mouse, every catch of his claws punctuated by a muffled noise of misery that Ed has zero control over. 

Ed isn’t sure how long this goes on because time doesn't flow like it did before, doesn't exist in this closet like it did outside of it. All he knows is that it's long enough for the dragging, burning pain to wear down at the edges, giving way to flickers of a frightening sort of pleasure. It skips dangerously along Ed’s nerves, adding further complication to that part of his brain that’s still insisting this can’t be happening. It can’t be, it’s not real, it’s not real, this shit doesn’t _happen_ and even if it did there’s no way it would ever be like this. 

This- it’s not what he thinks it is. It’s not the ugly four letter word that keeps coming to him over and over again. That doesn’t happen to kids, it isn’t done to them by people they know and trust, it’s something that happens in dark alleys in the dead of night between people who are strangers. It’s not happening to him. It’s _not_.

It’s when Mustang’s body starts to grow tense and erratic and a stream of disgustingly dirty observations and accusations start to leave his mouth that Ed realizes his earlier threat had actually been a promise, the ending Mustang sought all along, and he starts to struggle again. He kicks and arches and twists under Mustang’s body, his wandering hands, his mouth and tongue. Ed logically knows it’s still of no real use, but he can’t stop, instinctively fighting back with every ounce of strength he has left. It’s as if his subconscious knows it might be the quickest way to get this to end, and it does seem to work. Mustang pushes into him one last time and Ed goes still with him, squeezing his eyes shut and fighting the urge to be sick at the feeling, the pleased hums coming from Mustang’s chest. 

Then, finally, it’s over.

Mustang’s weight eases off of him, out of him, but Ed finds himself frozen, unable to move or even open his eyes. Every shuddering breath he takes in through his nose sounds amplified and unreasonably loud. He feels like choking, coughing, gasping for air, all of which the makeshift gag still makes impossible. There’s a rustle of clothing and a zipper, then Mustang finally releases the transmutation on the tie. He allows Ed a single unhindered breath before he presses a hand back to his throat, cutting off both blood and air. Ed’s eyes fly open and Mustang gets right down in his face.

"They would never believe you if you told them," he says, voice muffled by the building pressure in Ed’s ears. "And if you so much as try, consider your lives over."

He releases Ed’s throat, and Ed lays there for a moment, staring at the dark ceiling above them in a blood-starved daze. The realization that this man has just threatened his little brother’s life washes over him so terribly slowly. 

Mustang stands up and looks down on him, and Ed scrambles to push himself to his elbows, muscles trembling with the effort, sparks of pain sluicing up his spine. Terrified and a mess, body still exposed and vulnerable, he feels so pathetically small under Mustang’s cold gaze.

Mustang briefly steps out of the closet and reappears to drop Ed’s coat on the floor at his feet. He leans down, fixing Ed in another steel-eyed stare, and Ed has an urge to flatten himself back into the floor until he disappears. “Fix the carpet, fix your pants, and fix your face,” Mustang orders, pointing to each item as he says it. He stares at Ed for a moment longer, then leaves him behind in the otherworldly dimension he'd been forcibly yanked into. 

Ed does as he’s told, repairing the first two items methodically and without really feeling like he’s doing it. He’s not entirely sure what ‘fix his face’ means - he doesn’t understand what could be that wrong with it - so he does the only thing he can do, which is button his coat up and pull his hood over his head. 

He feels sick and shaky, like he's just had another brush with death, but this time death decides to linger afterward, watching - waiting - like a viper coiled and ready for ambush, a big cat shifting its shoulders as it settles low to the ground. It takes several tries for Ed to swallow the scream brewing in his chest, to gather enough of his scattered pieces to cobble together some semblance of a human who can function at bare minimum, to reach for the door and actually put his trembling weight against it.

When he finally walks out of the closet, Mustang is just fucking- just _sitting_ there, in that same chair with his tie perfectly tied and sipping his drink, like he hadn’t ever moved at all. He looks bored. “It’s late, Edward,” he says. “Go home.”

Ed leaves the room without a word and as quickly as his legs can walk. He makes it all the way down the long hallway and halfway down the stairs before the gravity of reality hits him like a slab of concrete at his back.

What the _fuck_ had just happened.

He feels bereft, like something’s been taken from him, and in its place something dark rapidly blooms, like a ship that’s had its side ripped open and has begun to let in all kinds of dark murk that’s going to drag him down. Every movement he makes is awkward and overthought, as if he's just been given a new body but no instructions, trying to figure out how to operate it via marionette strings while not drawing attention to himself.

Mustang’s voice echoes through his mind - _they would never believe you_ \- and it pushes him quickly through the crowd, swallowing and swallowing against the feeling crawling up his throat. He hopes nobody sees him, that they don’t notice his weakness or the fact that he's drowning. 

No one does. He slips out the front door without a word to anyone and walks all the way back to headquarters, pain catching at him with every step.

He goes straight to the showers and scrubs his skin until it stings like the sandpaper-like glove burns on his face. His reflection is startling. His cheeks and jaw are raw and red, his eyes too wide, too bright. Blooming bruises dapple the skin surrounding his throat.

When he returns to their dorm, he wants to collapse at Al’s feet. He desperately wants to be held by him, wants to share a bed the way they used to when they were little, the way they did the night Nina died, but he doesn’t want Al to question why. 

Ed curls up under his blanket alone, watches the clock with wide, burning eyes, and does not sleep.

  
  


He’s in so much pain the next day that he hardly leaves his bed. Al decides he’s hungover - _I_ warned _you, Ed, we_ talked _about this, I_ knew _those parties were a bad idea_ \- so he’s rightfully irritated. Ed lets him think what he wants and readily accepts being left to himself for most of the day. He takes the time to wonder at the soreness of his body, the pain that proves it hadn’t all been just some awful dream. It keeps him from thinking that maybe he couldn’t handle any alcohol at all - that even though the experience seemed so horrifically vivid, maybe he’d lost his damn mind to just a taste of quality whiskey. 

But no. He knows the truth, feels it bone-deep. His abs twinge every time he stirs, making his breath catch, which in turn makes his chest complain. There’s pressure from the bruises in his neck every time he swallows, along with a rawness in his throat from screaming. Every available leg muscle is absolutely spent. There’s evidence of desperation in every inch of himself. He’d fought - he’d fought _hard_ \- and he tries not to forget that.

  
  


Al doesn’t think much of Ed’s sudden aversion to being around the colonel. He assumes they’d finally butted heads over something, as to be expected, and just seems relieved that Ed has successfully navigated his _rebellious phase_ and stopped going to events put on for adults, even more so that Ed no longer voluntarily spends time with Mustang.

It isn’t lack of opportunity that makes Mustang's next move take some time. Ed is still required to take his briefings and reports alone, and Mustang has the power to call on him whenever he wants, but for a while the man carries on as if nothing ever happened. It’s long enough for Ed to think it was a one-time thing, to assume people in the office meant he would be safe and could let his guard down. Long enough for the team to get over wondering why Ed suddenly no longer spends entire afternoons in Mustang’s vicinity.

It’s almost a month to the day when Mustang takes Ed over his office desk after he gives his report. Mustang’s hand is like melded iron over his mouth and his feet don’t reach the floor. He bites against the balled-up glove shoved between his teeth even though the texture burns his tongue while his automail fingers claw grooves into the glossy wood surface that he’s made to fix afterward. 

And then a few weeks after that, again _,_ this time in the outer office after everyone has left for the day, Mustang spreading Ed out on Hawkeye’s desk. It takes weeks for Ed to be able to look her in the eye.

The original threat Mustang made is apparently no longer enough. Now Ed’s been asking for it, begging for it, it’s a wonder it hadn’t happened sooner, and he’s lucky it’s Mustang who got to him first. If he told anyone, there isn’t a chance they would believe him. They would shrug and say _we know_. They would ask him _what did you think you were playing at? you wanted to be treated like an adult, didn’t you?_ They would tell him _you led him on. you tempted him. you never said no when you had the chance. you got what you had coming._

It doesn’t take long for Ed to understand he’s stuck in this position until Mustang lets him go. There are people right on the other side of those office walls who don't have any idea as to what transpires within them, who don't think much of the occasional longer report and shrug off the way Ed sometimes hurries to leave as him being moody over an argument. Ed has no power, no leverage, no way to convince anyone to believe him, and everything to lose. He’s so punch-drunk and ashamed by what’s happening he isn't sure he would’ve told anyone even if he hadn’t been threatened.

He starts a log of dates with descriptions of their events that he filters through code. Part of him thinks he shouldn't, that this is only going to keep him stuck in those moments forever, and he should just do his best to not think about it at all. The other part of him is terrified he’ll do exactly that, and of the two, it somehow wins. He keeps his notes as diligently as if he were collecting data for an experiment. He’s a logical person, and as the entries grow, his brain scrambles for an explanation. 

Why is this happening. What is the purpose. What is the _lesson_. 

It gets to the point where he thinks he deserves it.

His brain maps the easiest connection it can make. He’s always felt like he and Al hadn’t sacrificed equally. Now he gets to understand just what it’s like to walk around with his entire body a crime scene.

He faces every encounter with timorous dread. He leaves his body a few inches behind when Mustang touches it.

It gets to the point where he _knows_ he deserves it, and so he bites his lips until they bleed and shoulders it in silence.

  
  


Ed does everything in his power to make sure he has to see Mustang as little as possible. He follows every one of the man’s orders to a T and avoids purposefully causing trouble. He leaves nothing from his missions undocumented, neatly types up all his reports, and hands them in before they’re due. He throws himself into research, providing Mustang with more than enough material to impress the brass.

None of it ever does him any good. If anything Mustang seems to enjoy putting time between their encounters at first, and Ed wonders if it’s to keep the evil things he does fresh for them both. As time goes on though he gets more daring, more aggressive, sometimes taking Ed for days in a row, then sometimes no more than once a week, and the utter unpredictability of it turns Ed into a nervous, wholly untrusting creature. Someone who flinches at the sound of a lock sliding into place or coat zipper being pulled open, who jumps at any shadow bigger than his own. Someone whose hands won’t stop shaking. He’s sure Mustang loves the thrill of burning it into his subconscious that he’s never safe, even just steps away from people who could protect him.

Ed still likes to think he does a decent enough job acting like everything is fine. He already had more than enough baggage to blame for his nightmares and heated outbursts. Things have been weird between him and Hawkeye since their discussion in the basement, and he’d never shown interest in getting to know anyone aside from Mustang anyway, so his misanthropic tendencies can’t really be considered a surprise.

The one person he’s unable to convince is, predictably, his brother. Ed waits so long for Al to confront him that it catches him a little off guard when he finally does. It’s a few nights after the first snow of year’s end, while they read in their dorm by the light of a single lamp between them, when Al lowers his book and asks Ed why he looks at the colonel _like that_.

“Like what?” Ed asks, schooling his expression to well-practiced indifference. It’s not like Al often gets to see him and Mustang in the same room anymore, so whatever it is must be easy to see.

“Like you want to hurt him,” Al says quietly.

Ed falters, feeling as if he’s been shoved a few inches outside himself sideways. The time it takes him to recover is brief, a couple seconds at most, but he knows Al sees it. 

“I’ll tell you when you’re older,” he says without looking up from his book, even though he can no longer feel the page between his fingers and the words have suddenly ceased to mean anything to him.

He has no intention of keeping that promise, but it’s just enough to get Al off his back for the moment, and hopefully uninteresting enough for him to forget about it entirely. 

The next time Ed sees Mustang, he catches himself in the act of what Al has seen, multiple times. He may be perfectly obedient, coming when called and fetching when ordered, but his body language conveys something else entirely. His eyes narrow, his jaw clenches, his automail arm creaks under the pressure of his fist. It only happens when Mustang turns his back to him. He hopes Al hasn’t noticed that he can never bring himself to look Mustang in the eye.

  
  


Ed turns thirteen while in Mustang’s bed and it’s one of the worst nights of his life. This time there aren't any binds to inhibit the struggle he still loses, no gag to filter and dampen all of the embarrassing sounds he makes, no clothes between their skin. Mustang puts his mouth to every single inch of him, places where Ed didn’t even know people put mouths to. He makes Ed cry, then makes him come. He takes Ed, again and again, until Ed finally gives up and stops fighting. He breaks Ed that night, and then never touches him again.

  
  


IV

The realization that Mustang isn’t the military hero Ed once thought he was ought to be validating, but the truth is far too ugly for it to be anything other than sickening. He isn’t anything close to a hero. He’s a liar. A coward. He’s a fucking _murderer_. And it’s not just that either, it’s that he exterminated _thousands_ of people as if they were no more than ants. All it took was a snap of his fingers. _Poof_. Gone. For no _fucking_ reason. 

Oh, but it’s _still_ even more than that. He’s the mindless sack of shit who murdered Winry’s parents, point-blank and personal. 

Al is pissed, not only at the colonel for obvious reasons, but also because he thinks _this_ is what Ed has been hiding from him. He feels it’s something Ed never should have kept secret. Ed doesn’t bother correcting him, because at least Al no longer questions his vicious hatred for Mustang. 

Ed had wanted to hurt him before, but now he more than kind of wants to fucking kill him. It goes against everything he stands for, but Mustang makes it extremely difficult to see anything other than red. Red like the blood he’d spilled and scorched from thousands of innocent people. Red like the transmutation stitched into his gloves.

Ed hates those gloves and all that they’ve done. Whenever he sees them, he has the visceral urge to scream.

  
  


Ed’s annual medical exam comes back flagged. He’s underweight - _even for his height_ the nurse is so kind to point out, but Ed is too fucking worried about having his clothes off in front of another adult to even get mad about it. 

His mental health is also too shaky for them to ignore. They want him to see a therapist, but he refuses, so of course they contact the man responsible for him. Mustang waves their concerns away with handwriting too perfect for someone the likes of him. Ed hates that the bastard gets to so easily know the misery he caused, but he is grateful to not have to see a shrink. He doesn’t want to be coerced into telling anything to anyone. The whole situation is still beyond mortifying, and he doesn’t think Mustang would go empty on his threat. All he has to do is ‘discover’ Ed and Al's secret and report them. The military would take care of the rest.

There’s barely a chance anyone would even believe Ed if he came forward, and probably less of a chance they would do anything about it, but giving up his life at the mere possibility of watching Mustang’s burn still has a certain dark appeal. If this only affected himself Ed might've considered going for it, because the life he’s lived is hardly worth continuing at this point. 

But he isn’t the only one in this mess. Mustang knew exactly what he was doing when he threatened Al’s life too, and Ed refuses to turn his little brother into a victim of another one of his stupid, selfish decisions.

  
  


Ed gasps as he startles awake from another nightmare. His sleep clothes are tangled and his hair a mess, bangs plastered to his forehead, loose strands stuck to his back. There’s a feeling in his chest so endlessly deep and dark it physically hurts and makes his eyes sting. He curls in on himself in an attempt to soothe the ache, to try to contain it before it spreads, but he just isn't strong enough.

His breathing starts to come fast and shuddering, his muscles seize and tremble. His thighs press together, automail knee threatening to grind its way into its flesh sibling until it bruises and bleeds, like something in him makes him needle his own damn body into believing it’s in grave fucking danger. It flows through him in waves of cold dread, knocking the air from his lungs, pressing in on his throat as he struggles to keep from devolving into a mess of sobs. He does his best to keep quiet, but in the dead silence of night, there’s nowhere for him to hide.

“Brother?” Al says softly from somewhere close by, and Ed’s breath catches. His heart races on, but he forces himself to stay silent even though he feels like gasping for air.

“I wish you would talk to me,” Al whispers. “I wish you would tell me what’s hurting you.”

He’s so completely, utterly innocent, and goosebumps ripple across Ed’s body at the mere thought of telling him. 

No. _No_ way. There’s not a chance anyone would want to hear any of it, details so vile and diabrotic that the mere thought of them is enough to make Ed taste acid. He could never burden his little brother with this. Al hasn’t a clue as to what he’s asking for, and what good would it even do? Then they’d both be ruined over it, and that’s the best case scenario. That’s if Al believes him at all. Or even worse, Al believes him, but is overall indifferent, or even angry. How many times had he warned Ed? Too many. Far too many. And Ed had blown him off every single time.

Besides, it’s over. There’s no going back, no undoing it. The damage has been done.

Ed rolls onto his side, facing away from Al. His shoulders start to shake. As quietly as he can, blanket pulled tight over his mouth though he knows Al can still hear him, he cries.

  
  


The journal entry for February 3rd, 1913 decodes to _one year clean_.

Ed runs his fingers over the pages and considers burning the thing, but that’s exactly what Mustang would do if given the chance. He seals it inside of the walls of his and Al’s suitcase and continues to secretly carry the burden in every sense.

  
  


V

Ed has always been loud and abrasive, but lately he’s been so much more than that. He’s borderline feral, angry at everything and everyone, all the time. He knows he’s being an asshole, biting hands before they’ve even been offered and drawing blood from anyone brave enough to chance coming closer, but he won’t let himself trust anyone, and he can’t stop.

Sometimes he thinks of all the people he could have gotten to know better, perhaps even been friendly with. The brothers from Xenotime, the girl from Liore, the young woman he’d found buried in a pile of her own books. There’d even been another set of brothers in the Ishval slums. He’d been irreparably callous to all of them. Same with Mustang’s team, who’d long ago given up on making an effort with him, chalking his unpleasant demeanor up to puberty or lack of stability or just plain him being destined to be a jerk for the rest of his life.

Even though Ed is prickly with everyone, the way he speaks to his commanding officer still makes people talk. Surely the only reason Mustang allows it is because Ed kneels for him behind closed doors.

It's a nasty shock the first time Ed hears the word ‘whore’ in reference to himself. Logically he knows it isn’t true, and it’s been years since Mustang’s laid a finger on him anyway, but it still feeds that injured thing inside of him that doesn’t know any better. 

It feels like they see right through him.

  
  


Ed wakes shaking and in a cold sweat, his body aching, and it takes him a few moments to remember where he is, to analyze the feel of the mattress and smell of the sheets, and recall that he’s in Resembool. He'd had his adjustment the day before and, as expected, it feels like he's been hit by a truck.

Early morning light peeks around the edges of the blackout curtains, and Al is nowhere to be seen. Though he usually wants nothing more than to be alone after a night filled with bad memories, for once he desperately wishes his brother were here.

Ed throws his arm over his face and swallows down the feeling that makes him want to sob and scream about the unfairness of everything while he puts his fucking fist through the drywall, again and again and again, until enough of it crumbles to bury him.

He should've been ready for this. Reattaching automail after it’s been worked on is a predictable enough antagonist of ruining his night. It would probably bring bad dreams regardless of this particular brand of nightmare fodder, but every one it induces still hurts as viciously as they had from the start. No matter how long they lay dormant, a day a week and even some blessed months he couldn’t even enjoy because he knows, deep down, that they’re never going to go away completely. It’s inevitable for them to flicker and stir, to crawl up his spine and skitter out to the bare branches of his nerves, inducing the feeling of phantom hands and teeth and worse, sensations he'll carry with him for days to follow, as if his very skin remembers.

The urge to bury his face in a pillow and scream is unreal. He’s going to be doing this for the rest of his life, and he’s fucking sick of it.

Though Al is his first pick for comfort, above all, he just needs to not be alone right now. He soon finds himself crawling into Winry’s bed, and she lets him in without a word. Her windows are open and the wind is soft and sweet, the early morning sun bright on their skin. She toys with his hair, running her fingers through, gently combing through its tangles so it lays silkily across her sheets. It’s one of the most soothing things he’s experienced in such a long time, and he wonders if she could do the same to the clusterfuck of traumas inside of him, patiently untangling the black tendrils that have swirled and knotted in his core until her hands can run through them without catching.

He says her name, and their eyes meet. His limbs tingle and his heart _thunders_. He’s toed the line of death more times than he can count, but laying there with this confession in his mouth is easily one of the scariest things he’s ever done in his life. He tries to remember what it was like to be vulnerable and trust that it wouldn’t be mishandled, before he’d been bent and mangled and thrown away.

His hesitation leaves enough time for Winry to misinterpret the cause of his nerves, and she leans in to kiss him.

Ed is up on his elbows in an instant, jerking away so violently it startles her. For a moment they just stare at each other, and Ed can feel his expression mirroring her wide-eyed confusion before he crumbles.

“What are you doing?” he asks brokenly.

Winry’s face darkens in embarrassment. She stutters an apology and bolts, leaving him to deal with his demons on his own, which is for the best. He hopes she was too embarrassed to properly read the look on his face. It’s fucking pathetic that an almost-kiss from his oldest and dearest friend makes him want to crawl in a literal hole. It forces the grave reality of his situation into focus, and Ed becomes grateful for the misunderstanding. He decides it’s preferable to the alternative, to the way he’d meant for the scene to play out. 

He can’t believe his dumb ass had actually almost told her. 

_Hey, remember that guy who executed your parents? the one I’m still working for? You probably thought he couldn’t ever be a bigger piece of shit, but kindly allow me to change that assessment._

Thank the fuck he hadn’t. He imagines the look on her face if he’d done it; how she would’ve cried for him. He doesn’t see the point in upsetting her. She’s been through enough in the wake of the blight that is Roy Mustang.

They never talk about the attempted kiss, and they’re never quite the same after.

  
  


The only adult who gets remotely close enough to being on friendly terms with Ed is Hughes. This should make about as much sense as Ed being on friendly terms with Mustang himself. The two men are supposedly best of friends, and anyone who associates with Mustang on that sort of level isn’t anyone to be trusted. Not that Ed _trusts_ him. But Mustang is a master of manipulation, easily making others see just what he wants them to. Even Ed had fallen for it, and he really can’t fault anyone else for doing the same. Plus Al genuinely likes Hughes, and Al’s a pretty good judge of character, so Ed accepts him, even if it’s just at bare minimum. 

It’s a lot more difficult to keep emotional distance from Gracia and Elysia, the latter of which Ed watches with an inexplicably intense urge to protect. He decides it’s because she reminds him of Nina. That’s all.

Hughes is the first person to visit them in the hospital after Lab 5. Al isn’t speaking to Ed, hardly even wants to be in the same room as him, and even though that’s a whole other issue Ed has to deal with, at least he’s alone for the interview. With every question Hughes asks about the lab, all Ed can think about is how he should have died down there, along with all his sins and secrets. And Hughes is just- just so fucking _nice_ , a father to his very core and someone who always knows the right thing to say. 

And maybe- maybe Ed doesn’t have to mention Mustang at all. Maybe it would be enough to just say _it_ , to blame a nameless, faceless entity and finally get this weight off his chest. He’s suddenly desperate for someone to acknowledge the evil done to him, maybe even help make sense out of it.

But then Mustang of all fucking people interrupts them, silently hovering outside Ed’s hospital room just like he so often appears at the edges of Ed’s vision. He may as well have strode right in and taken up post at Ed’s bedside. Ed prays that Hughes can’t see the sudden wave of fear that washes over him like a shower of ice shards swimming in freezing water, bringing with it the memory of Mustang visiting him after Barry the Chopper, trying to coax a confession similar to the one Ed wants to make now.

Ed swears Mustang knows just what he was about to do. There’s no other reason for him to be hanging around like some sort of ominous shadow. 

Even with the distance between them, Ed’s sure the guilt is clearly written all over his face. He answers the rest of Hughes’s questions with single words, avoiding any further eye contact with either of the two men. Even without looking at him, Ed can tell Hughes notices his sudden shift in behavior. He wraps things up shortly after, thanks Ed for his time, and strongly implies they should catch up sometime soon. His hand on Ed’s knee feels like it burns through his clothes and singes his skin, but Ed doesn’t so much as flinch. Mustang leaves with the lieutenant and one last, long look at Ed.

Hughes dies two days later, and Ed spends years wondering if Mustang had something to do with it.

The distance he sought to keep between himself and Gracia and Elysia becomes easier to find in the physical sense, but not a day goes by that he doesn’t think of them. Especially Elysia, who is quick to run and hide the few times he and Al do visit. He doesn’t blame her. It’s probably his fault she no longer has a father.

  
  


The battle assessment is a bad idea. Ed knows this, but clearly not well enough, because he still insists on doing it even though he was offered the easy way out.

He thinks it might help him in some sort of way - maybe he could get through the night without startling awake in a cold sweat, or through the day without his brain feeding him a reel consisting of Mustang’s face and the things it had done. Maybe, if he can prove to himself that the man isn't the same threat he'd once been, he can be free from this weighted thing that constantly grapples at his shoulders, pulling him down.

In reality, the moments right before the assessment find Ed terrified. His heart beats so fast and wild while waiting to head out to the makeshift arena that he worries it'll fail on him at any moment. He becomes hyper-aware of the way his clothes pull at his clammy skin, how his tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth. He hopes no one can see him shaking when he finally faces down the man who’d burned the already tattered remnants of his childhood. The unexpected intensity of his fear throws Ed completely off his game, turns him into that same desperate creature Mustang once so loved making him into. It’s why he ends up on his knees in front of Mustang after thinking he’d never be there again, with all the people who had once been just on the other side of the wall there to see it happen.

But something about Ed in that moment makes Mustang hesitate, and Ed doesn’t waste time wondering what it is. He’s all instinct, reacting as soon as he sees the shift start in the widening of Mustang’s eyes. It’s when Ed brings the tip of his blade to Mustang’s neck that some strange, scary part of himself says _do it_.

And in the moment Ed realizes he _can_. He _wants_ to. And if the Fuhrer hadn’t stepped in to congratulate them on their tie, he might have gone for it.

Mustang gives up all he knows about Doctor Marcoh as soon as the crowd disperses.

Ed spends his last years in the military avoiding him as much as possible, which turns out to be easy, because Mustang seems to be just as unsettled by Ed now.

  
  


There are too many moments when Ed could just lay down and surrender to death, and within them are too many times he wants to, too many where he might’ve gone looking for it on purpose, only to survive by less than the skin of his teeth. He wonders if Mustang sends him into dangerous situations with ill intent, but joke’s on him, because even though he would probably appreciate Ed ceasing to exist just as much as Ed would, Ed won’t allow it to happen.

The only thing that keeps him from surviving off pure spite and rage, that motivates him to cheat death time and time again, is Al. Al, who’s far smarter than Ed will ever be, who’s so damn forgiving of every slight Ed slashes into the space around them, who loves Ed so unconditionally he almost makes Ed think he’s not actually the worst person ever to be around. 

Al, who’d tried to warn him. Tried to protect him. 

He’s so, _so_ good, and he deserves the world, and Ed will hang on long enough to make sure he gets it.

Ed gives up an easy seven years of his life without a second thought to patch the holes left in his body by that wayward scrap of metal. If he’s lucky, if the universe takes any pity on him at all, it’ll round itself off to ten.

  
  


“There,” Teacher says, her hands lightning fast and feather light, and just like that, she nudges Ed off balance. He takes a single step to catch himself, signaling his loss of that round. He’s low-key pissed about how easy it still is for her to push him around. He thought the automail would make it more difficult, but she just turned the extra weight into better leverage.

He grits his teeth, resets, they begin again.

Push hands is gentle, smooth, and quiet, focused on bringing someone just past their point of balance while not upsetting one’s own, so it’s weird as fuck to be doing it with her when just yesterday she’d beaten him within an inch of him having a break down. Between the hug right after that, and her pulling him out of bed at seven in the morning for this, things are a _bit_ more than weird.

She didn’t pick a gentle exercise because she’s sorry though, and not necessarily because she thinks he needs it, either. She’s using it to figure him out, to see the things he won’t tell her, even those he doesn’t know himself. Twenty seconds in and she’s able to tell he’s underweight, which isn’t news. Two minutes to let him know he’s starting to develop a curve in his spine from the automail arm pulling it out of place, which explains a lot. One more to determine his hips aren’t level either, because why not? That might as well be a thing.

He loses track of how much more uncomfortably intense observation it takes for her to finally confront him. To be fair he’s sure she could tell something was up from the moment she put her hands on him the day before, from the way he flinched at her touch and panicked when she put him on the ground, from all the other unsettling mannerisms and reactions he’s picked up while crossing the rotten bridge that’s been this part of his life.

She goes to trap his wrist with her arm, but as quick as a flash, snags it in her grip instead. It makes Ed flinch terribly and goosebumps bloom up his arm, setting off something icy in his core. In his defense there’s no grabbing in push hands so some surprise is warranted, not to mention he’s sore as fuck from yesterday so fuckin’ _ow_ , but the suspicion in her eyes still grows ten-fold. 

“You’re carrying something heavy,” she says. Her hand tightens just a fraction. “What is it.” 

Ed resists the urge to yank his wrist free and tries to calm his racing heart, certain she can feel his pulse through her grip. 

He should’ve known this is where they were headed. She hadn’t hid the fact that she was mapping out the shyest pieces of him; of course she would analyze what their collective existence means. Sometimes he forgets that she’s a scientist, and does that too. 

“Automail ain’t light,” he answers with a straight face. Her eyes narrow. He'd bowed to her before this workout and therefore consented to whatever she had to teach him, so he knows he’s asking for it with this smart assery. He might kind of hope she takes the bait. He thinks fighting her would be far less painful than having this conversation.

He isn’t ready for it. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be.

“Edward,” she says in warning.

Ed grits his teeth. He doesn’t dare take his wrist back, but still openly glares at her. “The part where my mom died?” he snaps. “Or the one where we tried to bring her back and got ourselves completely fucking decimated? or the one where a man turned his own daughter into a chimera? the ones where I almost got murdered by two different serial killers?” He’s hoping at least one of those will be enough to rattle her, but no such luck. He breaks eye contact to stare at a rock on the ground. “You’re gonna have to get more specific.”

Teacher continues to stare at him levelly. “No,” she finally says. “I don’t think I do.”

Ed clenches his jaw and bows his head. He diverts almost all of his focus into not drowning in the sudden tidal wave of shame that washes over him.

Teacher waits there for a moment, then when it becomes obvious he has nothing to say, she lets him have his wrist back. She leaves him standing there in the garden, feeling like his insides have been exposed.

  
  


Ed wants to throw it all in his father’s face, wants to rub his nose into every single gritty, dirty detail of what his abandonment had sparked the course of. He’s become unnecessarily good at shoving verbal barbs into sensitive places, and though Hohenheim absolutely deserves to feel even just a degree of the pain both his children have gone through, he also doesn’t deserve to know Ed in that way at all.

Ed throws his hands instead, and Al has to bodily drag him off of their father when no one else can. Al doesn’t speak to him for days afterward. Hohenheim never directly speaks to him again. That’s just fine, because Ed has nothing to say to him.

  
  


Ed doesn’t so much as make an effort with Ling as he simply tolerates him. The prince is whiny and annoying, but he’s also an impressively quick and skilled fighter, and with the growing seriousness of their situation, Ed knows they may need his help. That, and the chance to be around someone his own age doesn’t pop up too often, and Ed’s made fuck-all out of the few opportunities he’s stumbled on during the past five years, so he does his best to play nice, and mostly succeeds. He still can’t stand Ling half the time, but that’s better than he gives most. 

It’s pretty fucking fortunate he’s the one Ed gets stuck with inside of Gluttony, really. It could have just as easily been Mustang, and Ed absolutely doesn’t want to consider all the ways that would’ve been awful and might’ve gone wrong. He could’ve also been stuck in here utterly alone, and he’d be lying if he said he isn’t grateful to not be.

He and Ling have taken to deeper discussions while resting in between sessions of wandering the slums of the homunculus’s insides. Ling’s using this break to go on about the Dragon’s Pulse and qi, which Ed’s still a little skeptical over. It certainly would explain Ling’s acute awareness of everything around him, and how he’d immediately known Ed was with him. Meanwhile Ed had spent his first few minutes inside Gluttony in a lonely panic, thinking he had to be dead. 

He’s still not entirely sure he isn’t. He’s also not sure about body channels and energy hubs and all that, let alone Ling being able to perceive any of them.

It seems Ling may even be able to tell that Ed remains unconvinced. There’s enough of a pause in his rambling to grab Ed’s full attention, and then he carefully asks Ed why his presence is so disturbed. He describes Ed’s colors as muted and dark, his vibrational frequency irregular, and there are blockages in his energy flow, leading to these imbalances. 

He says it must hurt. 

Ed has felt like a heap of sharp, twisted things for so long he’s forgotten what it was like to be anything else, and it’s pleasantly validating to have someone finally see the ugliness in him for what it really is - pain.

His gut reaction is to shut Ling down and tell him it’s none of his fucking business, but that chronically lonely and misjudged part of himself is intrigued. Since they’re probably going to die in here, he thinks it’d be nice to tell just one person before that happens. He goes as far as admitting he’s been dealing with it all on his own for ages, about how he’s never succeeded in putting it to words, but when the time comes to say it, he still can’t bring himself to. It would be selfish to throw something so heavy onto Ling’s shoulders in his final moments, even if Ling can feel the weight on Ed’s own.

Ling, either sensing further upset or satisfied that Ed finally believes him, doesn’t push him for an answer. They end up making out and getting one another off instead, because Ed also thinks he’d like to have made that decision for himself at least once.

  
  


It’s hard to say which is worse: Envy claiming it was he who killed Hughes, or that Mustang had been on the other end of the phone line listening and did absolutely nothing. 

Ed isn’t afforded the luxury of pressing Envy for more information. He doesn’t know if Mustang’s subsequent rage is born from the confession or accusation, but within the span of a single breath, Envy is wrapped in flames intense enough to completely reduce him to ash. Ed and Hawkeye stand rooted to the spot, unable to move as they watch. It’s in that moment, Mustang’s figure outlined by smoke and fire, that Ed suddenly realizes how much smaller Mustang is compared to his memories. Somehow they now nearly see eye to eye. Ed wonders when that happened.

When the dust settles, Hawkeye’s finger still rests on the trigger she couldn’t bring herself to pull. Ed is torn between asking her why, and pointing out that it isn't too late. Hughes may have bled out in a matter of minutes, doomed to his grave the moment the bullet pierced his body, but it takes a special kind of evil to not offer a dying man - a man who died _for_ him, no less - even a shred of comfort in his final moments, to leave him laying there for a civilian to find. Ed is hesitant to believe anything Envy ever had to say, but Mustang certainly seems like the type, to put it mildly.

But it isn't Ed's place to put that kind of weight on her conscience. Besides, Mustang is such a sorry excuse of a human being that Ed doesn’t think he's even worth the bullet. He isn’t deserving of the kind of mercy that quickly absolves him of all he’s done.

It ought to be frightening to see him crack and lose control, but somehow it isn’t.

  
  


VI

The scales that Ed suspects had started tipping years before go through a dramatic shift after they endure the Gate and the Promised Day. 

Ed gains an arm. Mustang loses his sight. Ed meets his goal. Mustang’s ends like wet fingers to a wick.

He just had to act all fucking noble and tell them to heal Havoc first. Ed wonders if, after Envy’s little stunt, Mustang decided he needed to come off like he actually gave a fuck about his people to avoid Hawkeye igniting suspicion within them. The stone held out long enough after Havoc to give the bastard one single second before disintegrating. Ed wishes he could have seen the look on his face. Serves him fucking right.

Ed would gladly give back his right arm to have never experienced the things Mustang had done to him, but Mustang having to stay blind definitely helps him sleep a little easier.

Hawkeye is quick to think the Gate took more than just Mustang’s eyesight, but Ed isn’t entirely convinced. He thinks that if he was trapped with memories as his only visual, he might start to lose it a little bit, too, and his own rap sheet isn’t nearly as damning.

  
  


Ed turns in his resignation as soon as Mustang is back on desk duty. Al wanted to take a later train so he could tag along, but Ed was able to convince him otherwise by pointing out it would throw off the entire first segment of his travel schedule, delaying his arrival to the eastern border where Ling’s entourage would be waiting for him. Luckily being even a slight inconvenience to anyone is one of Al’s biggest fears, because this is something Ed needs to do alone. There’s not a chance Al would let him get away with what he was about to do without an immediate and thorough explanation, and it’s a conversation Ed’s just not ready to have.

The fact that the colonel can’t see doesn’t make it any less unnerving to stand in front of him, but it’s only the second time in a long, long while that Ed feels something other than fear, anger, or embarrassment, and so he takes the opportunity to properly look at the man for the first time in six years. If Mustang wasn’t such an utter piece of human trash Ed might’ve felt guilty for taking advantage of his vulnerability, but seeing as he’d never shown an ounce of remorse for taking advantage of Ed’s own, he doesn’t think he’s going to lose sleep over it. 

Mustang tries to convey his usual air of control, but with the way Hawkeye has to prompt and direct most of his movements, it’s relatively unconvincing. Ed again notes how much smaller he seems, how unrefined and rattled his once polished and confident demeanor now is. Though the difference in him from just before the Promised Day versus now seems like night and day, something odd gnaws at the back of Ed’s mind, and it only makes him study Mustang harder to find the connection.

Hawkeye, blessedly distracted by paperwork, doesn’t notice. “His release form is complete,” she says, setting it in front of Mustang and positioning his hand to hold the pen just where his signature should begin. Ed watches Mustang hesitate, his jaw clench and breathing escalate, frozen in the face of something that had once come so simply to him.

What Ed had seen all those years ago during the battle assessment, and again during Envy’s final moments, finally clicks into place. The man is sick from the inside, something in his very structure is broken, and it wasn’t losing his sight that did it. He was broken long before that. He’s been broken this whole fucking time. 

Something inside Ed settles at this revelation. A knot eases loose, and a cascade of tension leaves him in a single exhale.

“Let’s see…” Hawkeye murmurs as she returns her attention to the box Ed had brought his things in. “Uniform- still in wrapping,” she notes in slight amusement. “Pocket watch, and-” She pauses in her rummaging. Though the item itself is innocent enough, a furrow forms between her brows. “What is this?” she asks. 

Mustang, whose once neat signature has turned timid and sloppy, stops mid scrawl. "What is it?" he asks. 

Hawkeye lifts the worn little journal out of the box, sweeping a thumb across its cover. She glances up at Ed. He steadily holds her gaze.

“I want you to have it,” he tells her.

“What _is_ it?” Mustang repeats, his voice increasing in both demand and impatience. His pen has touched the paper without him knowing, blotting a large stain over his half-formed signature.

Hawkeye unties the bind that holds the journal shut, and carefully opens the cover. She leafs through the mostly illegible pages, the first time they’ve seen light in over four years. "Its- a list of dates,” she says, grabbing on to the only descriptor she can make sense of. “Between 1911 and 1913."

Mustang’s outline goes rigid and his eyes widen in obvious shock. Ed wonders if Hawkeye was right about the Gate taking more than just his sight, and if he’d also lost the ability to operate behind a mask, no longer able to pretend he isn’t what he is, no longer able to control others with his lies. Ed can practically hear the voice of Truth condemn Mustang for the time he’d spent manipulating and lying to everyone around him - something about Mustang seeing nothing while the world can see everything seemed fitting to the enigma’s tastes.

It would certainly explain a lot, especially how Mustang suddenly looks uncharacteristically nervous and utterly, absolutely guilty when Ed was expecting no more than the trademark Mustang indifference. It may as well be a confession, and Ed decides it’s a good point to sever the connection between their lives. He doesn’t need to know if the others believe him or not. He doesn’t need anything else.

"Ed," Hawkeye says as Ed turns on his heel. There’s the edge of a plea to her voice. "Ed!” she calls, her voice even higher this time. “What are these? What do they m-"

But he's out the door before she can finish. Head held high, shoulders back, and unafraid. 

  
  


He receives a letter from Hawkeye two weeks later. It takes him another two weeks to open it.

He almost can’t believe what he reads.

The first part is straight-forward enough. It says, in a roundabout turn of events, the colonel decided to proceed with a medical discharge after all. This was likely due to the fact that, once Falman decoded the journal, the entire team put in formal requests to be transferred elsewhere. Either not wanting anyone else to question why this had happened, or knowing that building a new team in his current state would be impossible, Mustang had gone quietly. No one has seen or heard from him since. 

It’s kind of incredible, really. Not that they managed to decode the journal; the code hadn’t been terribly difficult, as its main purpose was only to slow down whoever found it; namely, Al. But it _is_ incredible they all believed him when Ed had spent years convinced they wouldn’t. It really was as simple as that. It’s almost too good to be true.

It’s the second part of the letter that makes him understand, and he feels the charred remains of his childhood collapse.

It’s an apology- the confession of a young girl who’d never told anyone what it’d been like to know her father’s apprentice, who’d been coerced into following him and only stayed to keep an eye on him. It was the wrong decision, she now knows. She’d tried, but it wasn’t enough. She’d been a fool to think she could handle this. She’d failed. 

Ed is stunned. But he isn’t angry. He just feels tired and sorry for them both. 

He thinks he may have liked it better when she was around to watch over Mustang, but it hadn’t done Ed a whole lot of good anyway, so it is what it is. He does his best to not concern himself with the man’s well-being or whereabouts. He isn’t so naive to think blindness and whatever the fuck else Truth had done will absolutely be enough to stop him from hurting anyone else, but Ed can’t hold himself responsible for whatever Mustang does in the future. He’s been through enough, he decides. He’s been through enough, and he doesn’t want to waste any more of this life on a cockroach. 

After all, he’d experienced how that had gone the first time.

  
  


It takes a day for the horrified realization to finally creep in, for the overly protective instincts Ed had felt for so long to make sense to him, for him to wonder how he could have ever been so self-centered and imperceptive.

Not worrying about Mustang’s future is one thing. The past, and the future within Ed’s reach, are other demons entirely.

What if Ed hadn’t been his second? What if - in the five years that followed the last time Mustang touched him - Ed hadn’t been his last? What if it hadn’t even happened yet, but the design has already been laid?

He sits on this thought for a couple days, then pens and crumples letter upon letter, confession on confession. Nothing feels right. Even if it did, knowing his luck, it would either get lost in the mail or read by the wrong person. 

In the end he sends Gracia a simple postcard with a promise to visit as soon as Al returns from Xing. He wishes he was brave enough to do more, to do it sooner, but the mere thought of going alone leaves him wanting to dig his own grave. He couldn't even bring himself to say it to Hawkeye's face. How will he ever be able to do it while looking a mother in the eye?

But he’s already made up his mind. He _has_ to. If he can be the difference between another child having to walk a similar road all alone, he will do it. Even if there’s nothing to be found, even if she's held under the same threatening lies Ed had been, at least he'll have opened a dialogue. It's the best he can do.

He hopes Hawkeye has already made an inquiry, but it isn’t a bet he would sacrifice even a single cen for.

  
  


VII

He and Izumi sit side by side, sipping whiskey out of low glasses at Sig’s workbench in the back shed, watching the garden from the open overhead door. It’s the first time he’s had alcohol since he was twelve and it’s just as gross as he remembers, but it keeps him from shaking uncontrollably, so he endures.

They talk about the usual, comfortable things until they run out of them. Or at least until Ed gets so nervous about the inevitable he can’t think of another thing to say. Izumi has been watching, analyzing, and waiting, and she seems to understand it’s she who needs to open the dialogue.

“What’s up, kid?” she eventually asks, leaning an elbow on the table and fixing him in a gaze that he can’t bring himself to meet. “You seem to have something on your mind.”

His heart squeezes painfully. Six years ago he would have hated to be called that. He’d been a kid desperate to be an adult, so hungry for it he was blind to the even hungrier jaws he’d walked right into. He probably still is a kid, in some sorta sense - in the grand scheme, or whatever - but at eighteen he feels ancient, tired to a degree he didn't expect to hit until he was halfway through life or so.

“Remember when we did push hands a couple of years ago?” he asks, as if she’d forget. Everything about this woman is sharp, and it's not like they'd gotten together every weekend to gently nudge each other's lives out of balance. In fact, that interaction had been one of the last times they ever trained together. She denounced him and Al as her students within the year, and he began to think of her as Izumi shortly after.

“I do,” she says.

Ed swirls the whiskey around in his glass, then sets it down without taking a drink. He can feel the unease creeping into him, trying to pull him back and bring a safe level of disconnect between him and his body. He closes his eyes and breathes and tries to ground himself the way Ling had taught him, letting himself notice the metal rung of the stool resting across the bottom of his feet and the smooth bench under his elbows, to hear the breeze and taste the earthy scent of lumber all around them. He breathes it in and only lets it go once his lungs completely fill, his heart stuttering and tripping over itself to slow to a proportional pace. 

When he finally feels present enough to open his eyes again, Ed finds Izumi giving him the same knowing look she’d held him in two years prior, just feet away from where they now sit. 

“Sorry,” Ed mumbles. “I- I’ve never talked about it before.”

“Take your time,” Izumi tells him. She looks out to the garden and has a sip of her drink, clearly just as at ease and unhurried as she claims to be.

Ed jiggles his knee. Looks from his drink, to the ceiling, and out to the garden. Logically he knows Mustang’s years-old threats are now empty. His body is not so easy to convince, and it’s doing its best to remind him he’s risking his life to do this. 

“You know Roy Mustang?” he finally says, watching the breeze rustle the tree leaves, their fringes playing with the light. “My former CO?”

“Oh. Yes," Izumi says. "The one who lost his sight that day."

Ed can’t drown himself in his glass, so he downs the rest of it in one go instead. It burns and makes him grimace. Izumi watches him with a sort of patient softness that is rare for her as he clutches his glass and bows his head.

“Ed?” she cues, the most gentle he’s ever heard her voice, as if she’s afraid he’s going to shy away and retreat back into the dark to rebury his secrets. 

He wants to. Desperately. 

He'd punched a god, but is still afraid of his own shadow. He'd helped save the world, but still can't manage to save himself, to deal with this thing on his own. He hates that he has to leave others with the responsibility of how they perceive him because he doesn’t want this to be the first thing that comes to mind when they look at him, to risk feeling the ignominy of their pity or betrayal of their skepticism. 

But hiding it won’t change the fact that it’ll always be a part of him, a scar different from those scattered across his skin, one that he can only share by trying to put it into words. There’s no other way for him to move forward. Some things just can’t be done on his own. He understands this now, and at the very least, he has to try.

“He raped me,” Ed tells the tiny puddle of whiskey that’s gathered at the bottom of his glass. If his tongue wasn't numb from it, he thinks he may have been able to taste the word he'd spent years unable to say. “Multiple times, over the course of nine months.”

There’s a sharp intake of breath that cuts straight to his heart. “When?”

“It started when I was twelve,” he says, keeping his eyes downcast, too scared to look up in fear of finding disappointment or anger looking back at him. “Three months after I enlisted.”

This time Izumi’s breath shudders on the way out. “You’ve never told anyone?”

Ed shakes his head. “I mean, not at the time. He threatened my and Al’s lives. His team didn’t find out until I turned in my resignation.”

"You didn't even tell Al?"

Ed shakes his head again. “I almost told people so many times, but I just couldn't do it,” he quietly admits. He hazards a glance at Izumi. She’s looking off into the garden, a crease between her brow. She doesn’t look angry. She just looks sad. “You knew, though.” 

Izumi rubs her eyebrows with her thumb and forefinger, dragging her hand down to cover her eyes. “I had my suspicions. I knew something was wrong. I also knew you were going to guard whatever it was with your life at that point, and trying to drag it out of you would have only made it worse.”

Ed’s mouth pulls up at the corner. She’s always known him well, and she’s right. “Thank you for seeing me,” he says. “You’re the first one who did.”

"Are you okay?” she asks.

Ed’s barely there grin quickly fades, his lip falling between his teeth. 

How could he ever begin to explain it, let alone make someone understand? How could he tell her not a day goes by that he doesn’t think about it, that it plagues him in both daylight and his dreams? How he’ll just be doing the dishes, or hanging up his coat, or passing by a stranger on the street who wears the same cologne, and he’s fucking hit with it all over again? That he approaches every birthday with existential dread? That some days he worries he’s never going to dig himself back out of the hole it keeps pushing him down into?

“Um,” he says, considering all the unpleasant options before settling on an ambiguous, “That’s a complicated question.”

Izumi’s next breath is slower, deeper. She reaches for the whiskey, pouring him just a tiny bit more, as if she doesn’t trust him not to take it all again in one go, but she doesn’t need to worry. He’s been hit by a sudden rush of exhaustion, having finally been allowed to set down the dead weight he’s been hauling around for ages.

“So his team knows?” she asks.

“Yeah," Ed answers. "They all transferred when they found out, so I guess he decided to take the offer of a medical discharge over anyone questioning why they suddenly abandoned him. But that’s all I know.”

“They didn’t report him?”

Ed shrugs. “I don’t know. I wouldn’t be surprised if they did and nothing was done, or if the higher-ups just put pressure on him to get lost. I kind of suspect Hawkeye didn’t want to upset me with the complete lack of consequence for him. There was all kinds of talk about how I was sleeping with him for favors when I was fifteen and no one in power batted an eye, so who fuckin’ knows.”

Ed stares at his liquid reflection as Izumi slowly tilts her drink back and drains it. She reaches for the whiskey again, but instead of refilling her glass she replaces the cap, her hand lingering on the neck of the bottle. 

“What now?” she asks.

Ed doesn’t want to broach the topic of the Hughes family right now. He doesn’t have to share everything with her right away, or even at all if he didn’t want to, especially a suspicion still unfounded. And maybe a part of him selfishly wants to hold on to the hope that he’s worried over nothing. 

It’s something he’ll save for when Al gets home. Ed doesn’t think his heart could handle it without him, though the thought of telling Al everything brings up a whole new set of anxieties. It kills Ed to dread seeing his brother for any amount or reason, but as the days have grown longer and hotter, he’s become acutely aware of the impending end of summer, at which point Al will begin his journey home. 

To say Ed is worried about what his reaction will be is a bit of an understatement. Al is easy-going and sweet upfront, but he can be just as cold and calculating if he's given a reason. He may be smaller than he was during the days he spent bodily hauling Ed out of fights, but Ed isn’t so naive to think he could ever do the same to his monstrous force of a sibling. Al was back to wiping the floor with him during sparring sessions as soon as the doctors cleared him for exercise. If he decided bodily harm was the consequence, Ed would have no hope of stopping him.

It's no longer himself Ed fears for though. He feels foolish to have ever thought Al would respond in any way that would hurt him, physically or otherwise. Al wouldn’t so much as doubt the things Ed has to say, or blame him for any of it. Ed knows better now. He also knows Al is going to lose his shit when he learns the threat of his life is the chip Mustang used to get what he wanted.

“I want to tell Al when he gets back from Xing,” Ed says. “I’m just afraid he’ll hunt Mustang down and kill him.” 

“I wouldn’t blame him,” Izumi says. “If I’d known then, I would have.”

As someone who’d brought his blade to the very throat of that man and been just a push of his leg away from going through with it, Ed has little right to be upset by this. “I don’t doubt it," he says.

Izumi’s hand starts to move across the space between them, but she seems to think better of it and stops herself. She probably notices the sudden rise of tension in his shoulders, prepared to flinch away from her touch because he’s like a sad stray dog who’s been hit too many times. 

It’s not that he’s afraid she’s going to hit him or anything. He just genuinely hates the feeling of being touched, and wonders if another person’s skin will ever stop feeling like sandpaper. 

“What do you need from me?” Izumi decides to ask instead.

Ed’s shoulders relax a little as they lift and drop in a shrug. “I dunno. It just feels good to finally say it.” He pauses a moment before adding, “Even better to be listened to.”

Izumi’s face falls. He thought she looked sad before, but this look nearly guts him. “Did you think I wouldn’t believe you?”

Ed doesn’t expect the sudden stinging in his eyes, the burning in his throat, or the vice-like pressure in his chest. The fear and shame well up in him dangerously fast, and before he knows it he’s struggling not to let it overflow. He holds on to his little glass of whiskey so tightly it likely would have shattered in his automail grip, the wood beneath his metal elbow would have cracked, and he would have fixed them with the same sense of embarrassment he’d become accustomed to. Instead the glass holds fast and cool, the tabletop presses sharply into his forearm, and he clings to these sensations for dear life.

“I- I thought you might be angry, with me,” he chokes. “You tried. You did. And so did Al and Hawkeye and I just- I just didn’t fuckin’ _care_ , I didn’t listen, I was so st-”

Ed flinches when Izumi slams her hand down on the work bench. He’s seen her fracture the sides of fucking trees with a move like that and can practically feel the energy crackle through the wood beneath his elbows. “Edward Elric you stop that right this second,” she snaps. “This was not your fault. At all. Do you understand?”

“But you-”

Izumi shakes her head. “No.”

“I shouldn’t have-” _shouldn’t have brushed off her training shouldn’t have brushed off Al’s concern shouldn’t have brushed off Hawkeye’s probing shouldn’t ever have enlisted in the military at twelve fucking years old-_

“ _Stop talking_ ," Izumi orders, and Ed does. "Look at me." Ed can hardly manage it, but she waits until he does that too. Her eyes are intimidatingly dark and stern in their honesty, just as they’ve always been. “Would you _ever_ look a twelve-year-old in the eye and tell them it’s their fault an adult with a _monumental_ amount of power over them took advantage of it in such a horrific, reprehensible way?” 

Ed’s silence answers her question. 

“This. was not. your fault,” she repeats. “And I’m sorry. I’m _so_ sorry you were hurt like this. It _wasn’t_ your fault. It wasn’t.”

“He might’ve hurt others while I just sat there doing nothing,” Ed whispers, as close as he dares get to admitting his fear, that his silence may have allowed Mustang to ruin another life right under his nose.

“You weren’t doing _nothing_ ,” Izumi tells him, the absolute conviction in her voice undeniable even to Ed, who’s spent ages thinking otherwise. “You were _surviving._ And you are _not_ responsible for anything more. You are not responsible for what he did to you or anyone else. It was _his_ choice, and it is _his_ burden. Do you understand?”

Ed struggles to truly believe anything she’s just said - his rational brain has suggested some similar points during moments of short-lived clarity, though he suspected they might just be some sort of brain chemical defense mechanism - but he knows she wouldn't lie to him. And that, he supposes, is why he chose her to be the first to hear him.

Relief doesn’t feel like he thought it would. It’s not like he expected it to immediately absolve any of his shitty feelings or symptoms or whatever, but he didn’t expect it to hurt. 

His head bows and his shoulders heave as he tries to steady himself. Izumi reaches for him again, this time carefully slipping an arm around his shoulders. When he doesn't pull away she brings him close, wrapping him up and holding him tighter than his own mother ever did. 

He leans into her and allows himself to be vulnerable for what feels like the first time in his life. The first tears are like flecks of rain on his cheeks, droplets quickly turning into a storm, thunderous sobs wracking his body, draining some of the anguish that's been swimming underneath his skin. Izumi readily supports this flood of emotion without faltering. She doesn't try to tell him it's okay because she knows what a painful, ineffective lie that would be. She doesn’t even so much as shush him. Instead she silently bears witness to his pain and accepts every bit he feels.

He carries what was done to him in his bones. He carries it in his chest and belly, as phantom touches skimming and scraping across his skin. He sees them in his dreams at night and out of the corner of his eye during the day, fleeting glimpses often bleeding into full scenes flashing before his eyes, robbing him of reality. He has a lot of work to do, some for his own sake, and more still he's made up his mind in shouldering, even if it's not his burden.

He feels an ending and a beginning all at once, as if he's finally trudged his way through the boggy forest he’d been thrown into only to be met with the daunting face of a mountain. It would be easy to mourn the difficult path ahead, to agonize over the jagged trail and frigid precipice and the uncertainty of the other side. He could wonder what it looks like, hope it's something like peace or worry it's not even a quiet night's sleep. Instead he decides it’s enough just to leave the woods for now, to let the enormity of that lonely journey bring him to his knees and allow himself to rest a little while in the refuge of Izumi’s protective embrace. 

Ed lets her light be the first to shine on the darkest, scariest pieces of himself, and grieves for the mire he’d been pulled through.


End file.
